Sideburn magazine, the flat track specialist publication, has announced it is joining forces with Grant Martin and UK dealership Maidstone Harley-Davidson to contest the 2018 DTRA European Hooligan Championship.

Hooligan flat track is the sport returning to its roots. The bikes that compete are built and raced with the same spirit the pioneers had in 1930s America. This is a class for modified road bikes, just like the Class C bikes that established flat track as the original extreme sport in the 1920s and ’30s.

To be eligible as a Hooligan, the bike must have a standard road frame and an engine of at least 750cc from the same bike. Front brakes are removed and 19in specialist dirt track tyres are fitted. Hooligan racing is helping fuel a resurgence in amateur flat track in the USA where Harley-Davidson Sportsters and XG750 Streets and Street Rods form the bedrock of the sport.

Grant will be racing a modified Harley-Davidson® Street Rod® 750 in the five-round series. The 30-year-old professional tattoo artist from Maidstone, Kent, joined the DTRA in 2017 and caught the flat track bug. He won his hooligan debut race meeting, beating an international field.

‘Having got my feet wet last year, racing only the final round of the DTRA Hooligan championship, I’m super-excited to get cracking with this year’s series,’ says Grant. ‘It’s going to be great fun racing with some fast dudes and I want to win. I think the Harley-Davidson Street Rod 750 has a really great shot at the title.’

‘We decided to partner with Grant for his 2018 Hooligan championship after he helped create a fanzine project last year and we became friends,’ explains Sideburn’s editor, Gary Inman. ‘I’d admired his riding and the way he went about things. He looks like he was born on two wheels. This is only the second year of Hooligan racing in the UK and already the level of competition has gone through the roof. Grant offers the perfect mix of laid-back attitude, pure skill and his own unique style on and off the bike.’

The 2018 DTRA Hooligan championship will be fought over five rounds at four tracks: three in the UK and one in the Netherlands. The Hooligans will be a major draw at May’s MCN Festival at the East of England Showground, Peterborough, and the season finale will take place at DirtQuake in August.

Formed in 2013, the Dirt Track Riders Association is an amateur race organisation that runs the UK’s national race series. The club has grown every year and is run on a not-for-profit basis, all sponsorship and entry fees going towards the running of the club. Find out more at www.dirttrackriders.co.uk